This trailer may be, for example, a travel trailer, a boat trailer, a horse trailer, a market trailer or the like, which is typically towed by a tractor or towing vehicle. For a travel trailer, in most cases a passenger car serves as the towing vehicle. In order to bring the trailer to its final position, for example on a campground, it is usually unhitched from the towing vehicle and pushed to its final position by hand. But this often involves major efforts since, as the requirements on the comfort of such travel trailers increase, the weight thereof also increases.
To make maneuvering easier, trailers may be equipped with maneuvering drives. A maneuvering drive is an auxiliary drive which in most cases has a drive unit with an electric motor for each wheel of the trailer. The electric motors are supplied with electrical energy by a battery in the trailer and may be coupled to the wheels of the trailer to drive them and maneuver the trailer in this way.
When it is intended to maneuver the trailer, an operator may, for example, actuate the drive motors of the maneuvering drive via a remote control. In the simple case of a trailer with one axle and therefore two wheels, the maneuvering drive includes two motors which, when the trailer is intended to be shifted in a straight line, should rotate at the same speed. In practice, however, frequently speed differentials occur, which result, for example, from differences in the ground (asphalted path on one side of the trailer, sand on the other side) and different rolling resistances resulting therefrom, or else from slight differences in the power of the drive units of the maneuvering drive. In this case, the trailer will actually make a turn since that wheel of the travel trailer that is driven at the higher speed is ahead of the slower wheel. The operator then has to correct manually, so that rather than a travel straight ahead, in fact travel is frequently in a wavy line which iteratively approximates the desired travel path.